Shackles of Honor (54 page)

“Please, calm yourself, sir. You are frightening everyone,” she said calmly, though her heart hammered like a thousand horses’ hooves in a mad gallop.

“Who? Who am I frightening? You?” he shouted.

“The servants, sir. And…and though your mother is resting now…I know you do not wish to disturb her further.”

Mason stood glaring at her. Cassidy took the uncomfortable moment to survey the room quickly. The basin and pitcher, the full-length mirror that had been in the corner, everything breakable had been broken.

“I…I know the pain you are feeling, sir,” she ventured. “But please
—
”

“You know nothing of the pain I am feeling, girl!” he shouted suddenly. “You have not had to stand helplessly by as you lose a parent. Nor a sibling. You have lost nothing! Nothing but your freedom perhaps! Which maybe I never possessed!”

“You are right. I’ve not had to suffer as you are now suffering. And I’m so sorry. So deeply in agony for your sake that
—
” she began.

“Ha!” he burst out in a laugh of deep sarcasm. “So you suffer with me, is that it? You are experiencing my pain! Is that what you profess?”

“Please, sir. You have to
—
”

“There is nothing that I have to do! My father is dead! Miss Shea, I am lord of the manor now! My word is law here! My every demand met! My every need attended to! There is nothing that I have to do!” He looked about the room and stretched his arms out to his sides. “All this! All this is mine! I can break everything in this house if I so desire. If it helps me to feel better!”

“But it does not,” Cassidy muttered.

Immediately she began to tremble, for he glared at her hatefully. He was enraged with grief
,
and she knew it. As he began to stride toward her with the full wrath of a madman evident in his eyes, his open shirt caught on his bedpost, deterring him, and he literally tore the garment from his body and flung it to the floor. Stopping directly before her, his hot breath feeling like the wild breath of a mad stallion on her forehead, he asked, “How do you know? How do you know what helps me? What I want?”

Cassidy began to wonder how wise she had been to intrude upon his emotional outburst. He took hold of her shoulders firmly
,
and the expression in his eyes changed dramatically as he looked down at her. “If you knew what I want…as you profess…you would not come into this room when I am in such a state of loss of self-control.”

“You…you will not hurt me. You may destroy every object in this house. But you’ll not hurt me.”

“So certain are you,
p
udding?” he growled.

“Yes,” she managed to force from her throat, though the look in his eyes did nothing to encourage her belief of safety in his presence.

Mason released his grip on Cassidy’s tender shoulders and stood, back straightened, head held high, as he inhaled deep breaths, trying to gain control of his grief-stricken temper.

“What could my father possibly have had to say to you only moments before death claimed him? Hmm? Did he promise you release from this bondage in which you find yourself? Did he tell you of secrets no one else knows?” His intense, suspicious gaze burrowed its way into her conscience.

“I did not beg release from my betrothal to you. How shallow do you think I am that I would upset a dying man’s orders? And, yes, he did tell me. He told me why you have been required to marry me,” she managed to force from her lips.

“What of it did he speak to you? A sad, pitiful tale of young love stripped mercilessly from the hearts of those who had secreted it?” He shook his head scoffingly. “To think…perhaps you and I might have been sister and brother had it been otherwise.”

“Never. You are far too your father and I my mother. And I could not have loved you as such.” He raised his eyebrows and sneered mockingly at her as she continued, “Furthermore, your mother and my father could not have truly loved each other with the depth that they felt they did, for had it been so, they would have found a way. Defied whomever they would have had to defy…and wed all the same.”

“Forsaking titles, wealth, position? Humph!”

“Yes.”

He still looked at her with a mocking expression. “Then am I to understand that you did not truly love this stablehand…or gardener…this Gavin? For had you truly loved him, you would have run away together, leaving me to be shamed and yourself disowned by family.”

Cassidy drew in a deep breath and through clenched teeth confirmed, “Exactly.”

He grinned slightly, pleased somehow, and Cassidy thrilled inwardly as he caressed her cheek briefly with the back of his hand. “That is one refreshingly sweet thing about you…your ability to believe that such things could really be.”

“Such things can,” she stated angrily, for she did not like his intimating that she was naive.

“Perhaps. Only far more rarely than you perceive. More likely the people involved marry the detestable choice made for them and in a short time take lovers to satisfy their needs for friendship and other aspects of life.”

“I am no such infidel. Are you telling me that you are?” she asked forthrightly.

“You know I am not. Though I do not perceive that I could love any woman more than I honor my duty. Therefore, it is not as hard for me to do this thing as it is for you, for my heart belongs to no one.”

His words were stingingly hurtful. Final. He was informing her candidly that he could never love her. That he only intended to marry her and to endure life with her because it was his duty.

Though she wanted to fly at him, screaming and gouging at his flesh with her fingernails for breaking her heart so literally, she simply whispered, “I only wish I were as heartless as you, for then it would be as much a duty to me as well
,
and we could simply go about our unhappy existences without a care or thought to anything existing otherwise.”

She turned and exited his chamber, nodding reassuringly to the servants waiting outside, and walked across the hall to her own chamber. She had barely closed the door behind her when the tears burst from her eyes and her breath seemed to elude her. He had said it plainly
—s
poken the words to her, assuring her that she would never own any part of his heart. The spark of hope
—which
had helped her endure the announcement by her father that she was to wed this stranger, carried her through living in a house that was not her home, kept the one ember of happiness alive in her soul
—
had been extinguished by his forthrightness. By his cruelty. Stumbling to her bedpost
,
she grasped it firmly, steadying herself as she gasped for breath.

“Lord Carlisle,” she sobbed in a whisper, “you should have given him his freedom. Oh, why did you not give him his freedom?”

She startled violently when the door to her chamber flew open, revealing a shirtless, otherwise generally disheveled Mason standing there.

“Leave me alone,” she told him as servant eyes peered in a moment before he slammed the door behind him.

“I…I did not mean to speak so
—
” he began.

“Do not say another word to me, milord. For any further rebuke can only serve to further the degradation of me,” she interrupted.

He closed his eyes before speaking in a low, agonized voice. “He has left me, Cassidy. The mantle feels heavy, a yoke laden with brick upon my shoulders. My mother will grieve for him brutally…even more, though it is unfathomable to me, even more than I. She will need comfort beyond that which I think I can give her. All his obligations, his accountabilities, his duties are now mine to bear. I did not intend to speak so harshly to you. So cruelly. I did not mean
—
”

“Please, I have my own burdens to bear, though they be but millet seed in comparison
with
yours. Still, they are heavy and painful to me. Go about your vase smashing and curt revelations. I do not wish to be any larger a brick on your shoulders than I already am.” She turned to face him, leaning back against her bedpost for support.

“I am ashamed to stand here before you,” he muttered. “For you have done nothing but show strength, resolve
,
and all other honorable qualities. I can only beg your forgiveness and, in begging, petition your understanding of the great, unsoothable pain I am feeling at my father’s…death. I would never speak such heartless and untrue things to you otherwise, and I vow this day never again to speak such deeply cutting words.”

“You’re not a man to speak lies, sir. You only voiced your true
—
” she stammered.

“No. Truth mingled with confused and grief-stricken untruth. Those were my words.”

She knew in the depths of her heart he was sincere. He had spoken hatefully only for the pain he had been feeling. But if he spoke both truth and untruth…which was truth and which was untruth, she could only wonder.

He sighed heavily and passed by her, coming to sit on the foot of her bed, his elbows on his knees and burying his face in his hands. “The anger is gone from me now,” he mumbled. “Only the deep, pulsating pain remains in my chest. I had no idea that facing such loss could be so marring. Even when Jillian died
,
it was not so fully devastating. Perhaps because I was younger, stronger, or less aware of…” He inhaled deeply and raised his face to look at the ceiling, the moisture plentiful but restrained in his eyes.

“You are tired. You need diversion,” Cassidy choked.

She ached for the pain that was in his heart. She knew then that he had not meant all, at least, of the cruelty he’d spoken. She, after all, had intruded on his anger. Before she had entered
,
it was simply the vases and glass ornaments that had been the victims of his hurting. But when she had forced her way into his room, it had been an intrusion of sorts.

“What diversion? What do you suggest, Miss Shea
?
” he asked kindly but with a hint of sarcasm in his voice
.
“
F
or it would indeed take something monumental to divert this pain,” he told her, pressing one powerful hand against his chest over his heart. His left hand it was
,
and Cassidy’s attention was arrested by the bracelet he wore there. Now she knew. She knew why her father had given her the bracelet to present to Mason. Mason had known what it represented. And Mason had accepted and worn it from that moment.

Cassidy brushed at the tears on her cheeks, returning her thoughts to the situation at hand. “Well, you have already smashed every vase in the house to pieces. So that is no longer an option.” Cassidy smiled helplessly when he looked up quickly to her.

Mason grinned and shook his head, amused a little. “You are right with that one. Though you still have two or three in here of which I was not aware.”

Cassidy smiled and laughed slightly as he did. And then, when his features dropped to that of grieving once more, her heart swelled with pity
,
and she went to stand before him, looking down and saying, “I am so sorry, Ma…Mason. I’m so sorry I cannot help to ease your pain. I wish I could do something, anything to help you.” She was trembling from the courage needed to address him by name. He seemed not to notice, however.

“Something to temporarily distract me from my present thoughts?” He reached out and put his hands at her waist unexpectedly, pulling her forward between his knees until her legs were flush with the bed. She was unnerved when she noticed the expression on his face was changing. Fading from his charming features were the haggard lines of frowning grief
,
and slowly a look of mischief, of purely male mischief, was replacing them. “Are you offering yourself as that something,
p
udding?” he asked in a low, provocative whisper.

“You would never act thus when your wits were about you, sir,” she tried to tell him calmly.